MANURES. 2G5 



geates, or whatever chemists choose to name them — have done 

 the mischief. The soils of this neighborhood are, for the most 

 part, decidedly, often highly ferruginous, and the very sandstone 

 that crops out here and there in the vicinity of New Haven 

 is, to all appearance, a sandy gravel, cemented by oxide of iron. 

 The hillside at Edgewood, before your renovation began, was 

 in the early stages of becoming a moor^ such as, in humid cli- 

 mates, occupy immense stretches of country, producing noth- 

 ing but moss and heather. Were Edgewood situated in the 

 north of Ireland, or Scotland, or in Labrador, the hill-side, left 

 to itself, would in all probability soon be covered with plat 

 moss, and the heather-bell would make it as poetical as It 

 would be useless. The heat and dryness of our summer have 

 prevented this combination of beauty and worthlessness, and 

 made it simply an ordinary old mossy pasture, until, for a mar- 

 vel, it became a feature of Edgewood. 



" These little-known humates of Iron are poison to all the 

 nutritious grasses. As they accumulated, the proper pasturage 

 died out, the soil became more and more moist or springy, be- 

 cause of Its Induration on the one hand, and still more so, on 

 the other, by reason of the water-loving vegetation increasing 

 upon it, 



" In our climate sufficient drainage alone would surely cure 

 this evil ; but to drain a hill-side so abrupt as that of Edgewood 

 would seem absurd. Yet it is not absurd to squeeze a sponge, 

 and the soil was a sponge that would not let the water flow out 

 of it even on a slope of twenty-five degrees, more or less. By 

 drainage the land would be reclaimed, the incipient rock would 

 be broken up, the sponge would pass by insensible degrees into 

 proper soil, the waters would escape, and then the mosses, that 

 live In wet but perish in tilth, would give place to better herbage, 

 and the harsh, sharp-edged sedge would be supplanted by the 

 true grasses. 



" In drainage, it is the air^ and especially its oxygen^ which cuts to 

 pieces the cement that threatens the life of the soil. The air car- 

 ries away in its invisible embrace the moisture — takes position 



